Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy. This book sheds new light on this challenging text by arguing that it is ...
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Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy. This book sheds new light on this challenging text by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. The Posterior Analytics, this book argues, is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge: what it is and how it is acquired. Aristotle first discusses two principal forms of scientific knowledge (epistēmē and nous). He then provides a compelling account, in reverse order, of the types of learning one needs to undertake in order to acquire them. The Posterior Analytics thus emerges as an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind’s ascent from perception of sensible particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. This book also highlights Plato’s influence on Aristotle’s text. For each type of learning Aristotle discusses, this book uncovers an instance of Meno’s Paradox (a puzzle from Plato’s Meno according to which inquiry and learning are impossible) and a solution to it. In addition, this book argues, against current orthodoxy, that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing’s essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes.Less

Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning : The Posterior Analytics

David Bronstein

Published in print: 2016-03-01

Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy. This book sheds new light on this challenging text by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. The Posterior Analytics, this book argues, is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge: what it is and how it is acquired. Aristotle first discusses two principal forms of scientific knowledge (epistēmē and nous). He then provides a compelling account, in reverse order, of the types of learning one needs to undertake in order to acquire them. The Posterior Analytics thus emerges as an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind’s ascent from perception of sensible particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. This book also highlights Plato’s influence on Aristotle’s text. For each type of learning Aristotle discusses, this book uncovers an instance of Meno’s Paradox (a puzzle from Plato’s Meno according to which inquiry and learning are impossible) and a solution to it. In addition, this book argues, against current orthodoxy, that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing’s essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes.

How can one explain the structure of perceptual experience? What is it that we perceive? How is it that we perceive objects and not disjoint arrays of properties? By which sense or senses do we ...
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How can one explain the structure of perceptual experience? What is it that we perceive? How is it that we perceive objects and not disjoint arrays of properties? By which sense or senses do we perceive objects? Are the five senses sufficient for the perception of objects? Aristotle was the first to investigate these questions to a depth that makes his account fruitful even for contemporary philosophy, but also challenging. He addressed them by means of the metaphysical modeling of the unity of the perceptual faculty and the unity of perceptual content. This book offers a reconstruction of the six metaphysical models offered by Aristotle to address these and related questions, focusing on their metaphysical underpinning in his theory of causal powers. By doing so, the book brings out what is especially valuable and even surprising about the topic: Aristotle’s metaphysics of perception is fundamentally different from his metaphysics of substance. Yet, for precisely this reason, his models of perceptual content are unexplored territory. This book is groundbreaking in charting this new territory: it offers an understanding of Aristotle’s metaphysics of the content of perceptual experience and of the composition of the perceptual faculty, and aims at bringing out the breakthroughs Aristotle achieved.Less

Aristotle on Perceiving Objects

Anna Marmodoro

Published in print: 2014-08-04

How can one explain the structure of perceptual experience? What is it that we perceive? How is it that we perceive objects and not disjoint arrays of properties? By which sense or senses do we perceive objects? Are the five senses sufficient for the perception of objects? Aristotle was the first to investigate these questions to a depth that makes his account fruitful even for contemporary philosophy, but also challenging. He addressed them by means of the metaphysical modeling of the unity of the perceptual faculty and the unity of perceptual content. This book offers a reconstruction of the six metaphysical models offered by Aristotle to address these and related questions, focusing on their metaphysical underpinning in his theory of causal powers. By doing so, the book brings out what is especially valuable and even surprising about the topic: Aristotle’s metaphysics of perception is fundamentally different from his metaphysics of substance. Yet, for precisely this reason, his models of perceptual content are unexplored territory. This book is groundbreaking in charting this new territory: it offers an understanding of Aristotle’s metaphysics of the content of perceptual experience and of the composition of the perceptual faculty, and aims at bringing out the breakthroughs Aristotle achieved.

he volumes of the “Symposium Aristotelicum” have become in the last fifty years the obligatory reference works for all studies on Aristotle. In this 18th volume a distinguished group of scholars ...
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he volumes of the “Symposium Aristotelicum” have become in the last fifty years the obligatory reference works for all studies on Aristotle. In this 18th volume a distinguished group of scholars offers a chapter-by-chapter study of the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Aristotle presents here his philosophical project as a search for wisdom, which is found in the knowledge of the first principles allowing us to explain whatever exists. As he shows, the earlier philosophers all had been seeking such a wisdom, though they had divergent views on what these first principles were. Before Aristotle sets out his own views, he offers a critical examination of his predecessors' views, ending up with a lengthy discussion of Plato's doctrine of the Forms. Book Alpha is not just a fundamental text for reconstructing the early history of Greek philosophy, it sets itself the agenda for Aristotle's own project of wisdom after what he had learned from his predecessors. Besides eleven chapters, each dealing with a different section of the text, the volume also offers a new edition of the Greek text of Metaphysics Alpha by Oliver Primavesi, based on an exhaustive examination of the complex manuscript and indirect tradition. The introduction to the edition offers new insights into the question which has haunted editors of the Metaphysics since Bekker, namely the relation between the two divergent traditions of the text.Less

Aristotle's Metaphysics Alpha : Symposium Aristotelicum

Oliver Primavesi

Published in print: 2012-07-19

he volumes of the “Symposium Aristotelicum” have become in the last fifty years the obligatory reference works for all studies on Aristotle. In this 18th volume a distinguished group of scholars offers a chapter-by-chapter study of the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Aristotle presents here his philosophical project as a search for wisdom, which is found in the knowledge of the first principles allowing us to explain whatever exists. As he shows, the earlier philosophers all had been seeking such a wisdom, though they had divergent views on what these first principles were. Before Aristotle sets out his own views, he offers a critical examination of his predecessors' views, ending up with a lengthy discussion of Plato's doctrine of the Forms. Book Alpha is not just a fundamental text for reconstructing the early history of Greek philosophy, it sets itself the agenda for Aristotle's own project of wisdom after what he had learned from his predecessors. Besides eleven chapters, each dealing with a different section of the text, the volume also offers a new edition of the Greek text of Metaphysics Alpha by Oliver Primavesi, based on an exhaustive examination of the complex manuscript and indirect tradition. The introduction to the edition offers new insights into the question which has haunted editors of the Metaphysics since Bekker, namely the relation between the two divergent traditions of the text.

This book addresses two major problems in interpreting Aristotle. Firstly, should we reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of the corpus by assuming an underlying unity of doctrine (unitarianism), ...
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This book addresses two major problems in interpreting Aristotle. Firstly, should we reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of the corpus by assuming an underlying unity of doctrine (unitarianism), or by positing a sequence of developing ideas (developmentalism)? Secondly, what is the relation between the so-called logical works on the one hand and the physical-metaphysical treatises on the other? Although the problems appear to be unrelated, the book finds that the key to the first lies in the second, and in doing so provides an alternative to the unitarian approach, the first since Jaeger's pioneering developmental study of 1923.Less

Aristotle's Two Systems

Daniel W. Graham

Published in print: 1990-10-04

This book addresses two major problems in interpreting Aristotle. Firstly, should we reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of the corpus by assuming an underlying unity of doctrine (unitarianism), or by positing a sequence of developing ideas (developmentalism)? Secondly, what is the relation between the so-called logical works on the one hand and the physical-metaphysical treatises on the other? Although the problems appear to be unrelated, the book finds that the key to the first lies in the second, and in doing so provides an alternative to the unitarian approach, the first since Jaeger's pioneering developmental study of 1923.

This book discusses one of Aristotle's central doctrines, his theory of material
substance. The book argues that Aristotle's concept of heat is a crucial but
hitherto ignored part of this account. ...
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This book discusses one of Aristotle's central doctrines, his theory of material
substance. The book argues that Aristotle's concept of heat is a crucial but
hitherto ignored part of this account. Aristotle's
‘canonical’, four-element theory of matter fails to explain
the coming-to-be of material substances (the way matter becomes organized) and their
persistence (why substances do not disintegrate into their components). Interpreters
have highlighted Aristotle's claim that soul is the active cause of the coming-to-be
and persistence of living beings. On the basis of dispersed remarks in Aristotle's
writings, the book argues that Aristotle in parallel also draws on a comprehensive
‘naturalistic’ theory, which accounts for material persistence
through the concepts of heat, specifically vital heat, and connate pneuma.
This theory, which bears also on the higher soul-functions, is central in
Aristotle's understanding of the relationship between matter and form, body and
soul. The book aims not only to recover this theory and to highlight its explanatory
roles, but also to make suggestions concerning its origin in Presocratic thought and
in Aristotle's own early theology. It further offers a brief review of how later
ages came to grips with the difficulties inherent in the received version of
Aristotle's matter theory.Less

Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance : Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul

Gad Freudenthal

Published in print: 1999-02-04

This book discusses one of Aristotle's central doctrines, his theory of material
substance. The book argues that Aristotle's concept of heat is a crucial but
hitherto ignored part of this account. Aristotle's
‘canonical’, four-element theory of matter fails to explain
the coming-to-be of material substances (the way matter becomes organized) and their
persistence (why substances do not disintegrate into their components). Interpreters
have highlighted Aristotle's claim that soul is the active cause of the coming-to-be
and persistence of living beings. On the basis of dispersed remarks in Aristotle's
writings, the book argues that Aristotle in parallel also draws on a comprehensive
‘naturalistic’ theory, which accounts for material persistence
through the concepts of heat, specifically vital heat, and connate pneuma.
This theory, which bears also on the higher soul-functions, is central in
Aristotle's understanding of the relationship between matter and form, body and
soul. The book aims not only to recover this theory and to highlight its explanatory
roles, but also to make suggestions concerning its origin in Presocratic thought and
in Aristotle's own early theology. It further offers a brief review of how later
ages came to grips with the difficulties inherent in the received version of
Aristotle's matter theory.

Socrates' greatest philosophical contribution was to have initiated the search for definitions. In this book his views on definition are examined, together with those of his successors, including ...
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Socrates' greatest philosophical contribution was to have initiated the search for definitions. In this book his views on definition are examined, together with those of his successors, including Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen, the Sceptics, and Plotinus. Although definition was a major pre-occupation for many Greek philosophers, it has rarely been treated as a separate topic in its own right in recent years. This book, which contains fourteen chapters by different scholars, aims to reawaken interest in a number of central and relatively unexplored issues concerning definition. These issues are briefly set out in the Introduction, which also seeks to point out scholarly and philosophical questions which merit further study.Less

Definition in Greek Philosophy

Published in print: 2010-08-01

Socrates' greatest philosophical contribution was to have initiated the search for definitions. In this book his views on definition are examined, together with those of his successors, including Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen, the Sceptics, and Plotinus. Although definition was a major pre-occupation for many Greek philosophers, it has rarely been treated as a separate topic in its own right in recent years. This book, which contains fourteen chapters by different scholars, aims to reawaken interest in a number of central and relatively unexplored issues concerning definition. These issues are briefly set out in the Introduction, which also seeks to point out scholarly and philosophical questions which merit further study.

Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and ...
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Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading of Metaphysics Theta, the author argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both ‘actuality’ and ‘activity’ as translations of energeia, and by working out an analogical conception of energeia. This approach enables the author to discern a hitherto unnoticed connection between Plato's Sophist and Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta, and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in Metaphysics Theta, the claim that energeia is prior in being to capacity (Theta 8), and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good (Theta 9).Less

Doing and Being : An Interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta

Jonathan Beere

Published in print: 2009-10-29

Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading of Metaphysics Theta, the author argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both ‘actuality’ and ‘activity’ as translations of energeia, and by working out an analogical conception of energeia. This approach enables the author to discern a hitherto unnoticed connection between Plato's Sophist and Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta, and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in Metaphysics Theta, the claim that energeia is prior in being to capacity (Theta 8), and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good (Theta 9).

Metaphysics Book Zeta is widely regarded as the text in which Aristotle presents his fully developed theory of “substance”—his account of the basic entities on which the reality of things in the ...
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Metaphysics Book Zeta is widely regarded as the text in which Aristotle presents his fully developed theory of “substance”—his account of the basic entities on which the reality of things in the sublunary world must be based. Earlier writers have been interested most of all in Aristotle’s conclusions, featuring the distinctive Aristotelian concepts of matter, form, and form–matter compounds. Yet fully two thirds of Zeta is devoted instead to the views of others, not least Aristotle’s own other selves in the Organon, where form and matter do not appear. But the most striking “alien” presence in Zeta is that of Plato, who is frequently target, but at times, less expectedly, friend, not foe. Why does Aristotle suppress so much of his own, partisan theory, and devote so much space to the “received” views of Plato and others, or of his own other selves in other texts? The present work is interested less in the details of the partisan theory that Aristotle arguably is committed to, and more in his use of the philosophical tradition as he works through the discussion of substance as subject, as essence, and as universal, en route to his conclusion in the final chapter of Zeta. Aristotle’s goal is to produce a definition of substance—better, a definition of primary substance and of the substance of a thing. The status of his Aristotelian forms as primary substances is not the conclusion to Zeta, but rather a “given” that serves as a constraint on a successful definition.Less

How Aristotle gets by in Metaphysics Zeta

Frank A. Lewis

Published in print: 2013-06-27

Metaphysics Book Zeta is widely regarded as the text in which Aristotle presents his fully developed theory of “substance”—his account of the basic entities on which the reality of things in the sublunary world must be based. Earlier writers have been interested most of all in Aristotle’s conclusions, featuring the distinctive Aristotelian concepts of matter, form, and form–matter compounds. Yet fully two thirds of Zeta is devoted instead to the views of others, not least Aristotle’s own other selves in the Organon, where form and matter do not appear. But the most striking “alien” presence in Zeta is that of Plato, who is frequently target, but at times, less expectedly, friend, not foe. Why does Aristotle suppress so much of his own, partisan theory, and devote so much space to the “received” views of Plato and others, or of his own other selves in other texts? The present work is interested less in the details of the partisan theory that Aristotle arguably is committed to, and more in his use of the philosophical tradition as he works through the discussion of substance as subject, as essence, and as universal, en route to his conclusion in the final chapter of Zeta. Aristotle’s goal is to produce a definition of substance—better, a definition of primary substance and of the substance of a thing. The status of his Aristotelian forms as primary substances is not the conclusion to Zeta, but rather a “given” that serves as a constraint on a successful definition.

This book examines Aristotle’s concept of natural substance and its implications for change, process, agency, teleology, mathematical continuity, and eternal motion. It illustrates the conceptual ...
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This book examines Aristotle’s concept of natural substance and its implications for change, process, agency, teleology, mathematical continuity, and eternal motion. It illustrates the conceptual power of Aristotle’s metaphysics of nature, along with its scientific limitations and internal tensions.Less

Sarah Waterlow

Published in print: 1982-04-08

This book examines Aristotle’s concept of natural substance and its implications for change, process, agency, teleology, mathematical continuity, and eternal motion. It illustrates the conceptual power of Aristotle’s metaphysics of nature, along with its scientific limitations and internal tensions.

This book attempts to expound on Aristotle's views on time and modality. The term ‘attempt’ is used because on either subject Aristotle's thoughts are amongst his least accessible. In the relevant ...
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This book attempts to expound on Aristotle's views on time and modality. The term ‘attempt’ is used because on either subject Aristotle's thoughts are amongst his least accessible. In the relevant passages we face obscurities of language and occasional dubieties of text. But the main difficulties lie not with these. Often enough the words are clear, yet their import continues to evade systematic philosophical comprehension. To some extent this is true even when Aristotle is considering time and modality as separate topics. But perhaps the most frustrating puzzles arise over various connections he draws between temporal and modal concepts. For if one thing is certain, it is that he sees necessity and possibility as related to time in ways that find no echo in the standard modern treatment of these modalities. The book focuses on the following texts — De Gaela 1.12 and De Interpretatione 9 — and draws on Professor J. Hintikka's series of studies on the relation of modality to time in Aristotle.Less

Passage and Possibility : A Study of Aristotle's Modal Concepts

Sarah Waterlow

Published in print: 1982-06-17

This book attempts to expound on Aristotle's views on time and modality. The term ‘attempt’ is used because on either subject Aristotle's thoughts are amongst his least accessible. In the relevant passages we face obscurities of language and occasional dubieties of text. But the main difficulties lie not with these. Often enough the words are clear, yet their import continues to evade systematic philosophical comprehension. To some extent this is true even when Aristotle is considering time and modality as separate topics. But perhaps the most frustrating puzzles arise over various connections he draws between temporal and modal concepts. For if one thing is certain, it is that he sees necessity and possibility as related to time in ways that find no echo in the standard modern treatment of these modalities. The book focuses on the following texts — De Gaela 1.12 and De Interpretatione 9 — and draws on Professor J. Hintikka's series of studies on the relation of modality to time in Aristotle.

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